Gustavo Petro’s four-year tenure, many musicians thought last year, would be a good time for the bullerengue, the alabaos, the shawm, the llanera harp or the marimbas, in which the rich universe of Colombian popular music would have an equally worthy space.. to what other genres of music had. But in recent months something has been ringing in the ears of these musicians. The scream, which materialized in a tweet from the President on Jan. 31, when wrote that his wife, Verónica Alcocer, had traveled to Venezuela with Deputy Minister of Culture Jorge Zorro to “see the Venezuelan orchestral system in classical music” and thus “this year the Colombian orchestral system stand out”. Replicating this model doesn’t sound as good for these musicians.
Two days later, several of those musicians published an open letter to the president on the Change.org website, an initiative that now has more than 2,400 signatures. “We are writing to express our deep concern at the announcements made regarding the creation of a system of symphony orchestras inspired by the Venezuelan orchestral system,” read the letter, signed by musicians, cultural managers and teachers.
“El Sistema,” as the model of more than 120 symphony orchestras in Venezuela, attended by thousands of children, was years ago a symbol of pride for Chavismo and home to renowned musicians such as Gustavo Dudamel, the new musical director and artistically the New York Philharmonic. The founder of El Sistema, José Antonio Abreu, was a UNESCO Ambassador and Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts in 2008 and died in 2018. So why don’t Colombian musicians like this famous music education system?
They explain in the letter that it is now known that only a few people from Venezuela’s marginalized sectors are involved in this system. That in it “the parameters of the Central European musical world” are appreciated while local realities are left aside. This is very expensive and leaves little government funding for other genres of music. That it doesn’t offer jobs to all those dedicated to classical music. And the worst thing is that it is a hierarchical system where many abuses of power have been proven. According to British researcher Geoffrey Baker, who has published a much-cited book, El Sistema has seen “corruption, sexual abuse, gender inequality, favoritism within the program and a general ‘dark operation'”.
Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela in San Francisco in a 2007 photo.Lea Suzuki (Getty Images)
“It does not mean that we are against the European repertoire or symphony orchestra,” explains María Olga Piñeros, musician and professor at the Javeriana University in Bogotá, to EL PAÍS. “What I see in my colleagues is a desire for a broad musical umbrella that encompasses all forms of expression, that budgets for everyone on the principle of equality,” he adds, clarifying that symphony orchestras are usually budgetary priorities. A symphony in Bogotá playing Beethoven’s 9th symphony isn’t a bad idea, he says, but he doesn’t understand why it’s preferred over, say, a choir from La Hormiga, Putumayo, who want to set up a bambuco.
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The idea of importing the Venezuelan model is not new, explains María Errázuriz. From 1994 to 2005 she was executive director of the Batuta Foundation, a non-profit, government-sponsored music education organization. She has extensive experience in symphonic music education and has in the past studied the musical model of the neighboring country.
The copy was attempted twice, says Errázuriz, and failed both times. “The Ministry of Culture must find out the causes of the two failures,” says Errázuriz in a column. He explains to EL PAÍS that this is due to a combination of factors: the different approaches between Venezuelan and Colombian teachers; a very expensive model to maintain; a system that favors the professionalization of a potential Gustavo Dudamel over a diverse musical education for all fields.
The musicians, they emphasize in various letters, prefer to strengthen the National Music Plan for Coexistence (PNMC), which for almost 20 years has recognized “the epistemological, methodological and pedagogical diversity of our music” and counts symphonic among its genres . . “Despite the difficulties and financial limitations, the plan has produced an unprecedented rapprochement of people, regions, institutions and musical formations, especially the brass bands, which are the main symphonic tradition of our country,” says Errázuriz.
The Change.org letter wasn’t the only one. An association of bands also wrote to the government ensuring that “the orchestral system was not discussed constructively”. A group of musicologists sent two more letters, arguing that it was not expedient to create a parallel and preferential symphony orchestra education system. But, as the musicians tell EL PAÍS, they have not received an answer from the Ministry of Culture.
The debate by the Ministry of Education
The government received letters, articles and editorials. Minister Patricia Ariza responded with a statement this week. “We respect and appreciate your concerns,” he says, recalling his commitment to strengthening the PNMC. But the proposal remains: “As President Gustavo Petro emphasizes, the Colombian orchestral system will take off this year.”
Two days later, in an interview in El Espectador, Ariza clarified that the new project “isn’t done, it’s in the works,” and guaranteed a participation table to any musicians who want to discuss it. “There will be some meetings with the letter writers, which were also respectful,” says the minister. “The first thing I want to tell you is that we are very clear that we are not Venezuela. This is an orchestra project that has been very important in the history of Venezuela, but we do not intend to pursue it. It’s just an input,” he adds.
Juan Sebastián Ochoa, musician and researcher at the University of Antioquia, is not calm. “The discourse is ambivalent: they say a lot that they will agree and talk and that the project is under construction, but they don’t show any documents or don’t talk,” he told EL PAÍS. That the Venezuelan model is just an input doesn’t leave him alone, nor does he insist on building the system instead of focusing on strengthening the PNMC. “In other words, we don’t understand anything and remain on high alert,” he says. Daniella Cura, musicologist and arts curator, agrees that some trust has been lost between the ministry and the artists concerned. “They always say we’re done with this, but they don’t call us out and I’m outraged that they ignore us when we’ve given them a lot of respectful arguments; We opened a debate at the height and they don’t answer us,” says Cura.
For these musicians, Minister Ariza, coming from the theater, is not at the center of this debate. The first and last name nut is Jorge Zorro, a close confidante of Petro and Deputy Minister for Creativity and the Orange Economy. Zorro is a musician who comes from the symphonic world: he studied at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow in the 1970s and was conductor of the Boyacá Wind Symphony, the Colombian Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.
In interviews, Zorro has said he admires Abreu and what he has built in Venezuela. When he came into the new government, several musicians feared he would propose an orchestral system like that of the neighboring country. In November, during an event, he was asked whether he would enforce the Venezuelan system. “There will be no Venezuelan system in Colombia,” he replied. That’s why the musicians got nervous when they saw him learning about the Venezuelan system in January.
Faced with the greatest pressure against copying the Venezuelan model, Zorro was Colombia Hoy this week in the morning presidential program. There he praised Abreu (“he left a very important legacy for Latin America”) but reiterated that Colombia would not copy his model but would be one of several contributions. The Venezuelan system, he added, “serves the needs of the system itself, while we will serve the needs of a population.” Then why are the musicians protesting against him, the journalist asked him. “Suddenly there are interests of another order,” he replied. “It’s a project that’s in development, it’s not finished yet, and suddenly they felt threatened,” he adds.
The participation table has no date yet. The ministry, led by Ariza hand in hand with Zorro, promises in various forums that it will be the government of musical diversity. This score about Colombia’s musical future is not yet finished.
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